There was my maternal grandmother, of course, a petite woman who married at 16, long before women won the right to vote. I remember her as the good-hearted grandmom who frequented the "Golden Age Club" and who brought me fabulous gifts like oversized pencils and plastic rainbonnets printed with the name of the local bank.

But there was another side to Granny Madden and - when her husband died during the Great Depression - "Muscles Mamie", as she was also known, supported her family for 15 years by single-handedly running the family business, a scrap metal and rag junkyard in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood.

Then, too, there's my own mom and dad, aged 81 and 77 respectively, who shared everything from house-cleaning and laundry to gardening and quilt-making long before it became fashionable.

Mom and Dad always stuck by their principles, whether it was honesty (I still remember my dad arguing with the manager of Gimbel's Department Store because they forgot to charge him for a winter coat) or fair play. (Mom's supervisor once tried to pass her over for a promotion in favor of the supervisor's friend. Guess who won that battle?)

They also taught me about dreams and risk-taking. I still remember the day my parents piled the five of us into our tiny but pristine, 10-year-old Buick Special and drove from our blue-collar Philadelphia neighborhood to a suburban car dealership. There they plunked down the contents of an old brown suitcase filled with 10 years' accumulation of U.S. Savings Bonds and drove off in a totally-paid-for, shiny new Mercedes Benz.

All of which probably explains why I find our current senior center dilemma particularly vexing. According to Tony Nuccio, the city's director of community relations and social services, almost 15 percent of Asbury Park residents are 60 or older, and more than 27 percent of city seniors 65 or older live below the poverty level.

As you probably know, the Asbury Park Senior Center had long been located in the deteriorating boardwalk pavilion just north of the Casino. The view, of course, was spectacular (if you didn't look north, south or west), but the location was too remote to attract many city seniors, and the steep, winding ramp to the second-floor facility left even me wheezing.

Even after we sold the pavilion to Asbury Partners, our waterfront developers, in 2002, we planned to keep the boardwalk location while we looked for a better, more centrally located home. (While up to 40 seniors a day were bussed to the center for hot lunches provided by Interfaith Neighbors, the center itself was definitely under-used.)

Then, last spring - in typical Asbury Park, mixed-blessing fashion - a workman accidentally cut a gas line, causing the building to be evacuated. The line was immediately repaired, but New Jersey Natural Gas discovered that the entire system was dangerously decayed - a situation that rendered the soon-to-be-demolished building too dangerous to inhabit.

Where does that leave us? In the past few months, Tony Nuccio and other city officials have examined 79 sites, looking for a temporary home. Some were too small (we need at least 5,000 square feet, and 8,000 would be better). Many otherwise wonderful spaces, like church basements, were not handicapped accessible or did not have ADA-equipped bathrooms.

Other facilities were only available during limited hours (we'd like to have access from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday), or posed other dilemmas. (What do you do if you're using a church basement, for example, and the congregation unexpectedly needs the building for a funeral service and meal?)

Still other buildings were in poor repair, were wildly expensive, or had no kitchen facilities. (At the bare minimum, our temporary center should have a good-sized sink, a stove or microwave oven, and space for a refrigerator.)

On the positive side, we've pulled together a committee of about 20 seniors who represent Asbury Towers, the Asbury Park Housing Authority, Phillips Seaview Tower, and individual residents, and we've been brainstorming solutions and scheduling a few "road trips" to the most likely sites. (A new possibility surfaced just last week, due to local newspaper and radio appeals.)

And the drive to find a permanent senior center is definitely on the council's front burner. We currently have engineers and city finance officials evaluating the costs of purchasing and renovating a great city building that might accommodate both seniors and young people, and the council has agreed to invest part of our first community development money from Asbury Partners to jump-start either this location or a better one.

Even after we get our seniors permanently settled, however, my guess is that our informal senior committee will continue to meet, and city seniors will have better facilities and a larger voice as a result.

In the meantime, our senior programs are temporarily housed in the First United Methodist Church, which is not handicapped accessible, and a SCAT bus takes residents all the way to Belmar for their Interfaith Neighbors lunches. (Interfaith Neighbors also serves an amazing 33,000 hot meals annually to homebound residents in Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, and that service continues uninterrupted.)

But Asbury Park seniors deserve more in the short-term, and we need your help to find a suitable location that the city can rent on a temporary basis. Do you own property that meets the above criteria? If so, please call Tony Nuccio at 732-502-5757.

Outside of staying in good standing with Muscles Mamie's memory and my parents, of course, I have a personal reason for wanting a top-flight senior center. After all, I'll be eligible to hang out there myself in 10 short years, and I plan on having a good time.

Just don't ask me to keep up with Charlotte Burns when it comes to line-dancing.